Tetsunori Tawaraya’s Fierce & Hypnotizing World Will Air-Fry Your Retinas
Take a sledgehammer of ketamine directly to your central nervous system and when you are burrowed so deep in the k-hole, you will see time and space start to bend… bend… almost break. Until there is a pinpoint of light off in the distance and a clawed hand reaches for you. Remember how you got there. Because when you are back and the light reflects off everything with an acid gleam you will want to return. You will want to find a way back to the sideways world, the dirty world, the alien world of Tetsunori Tawaraya.
Tawaraya is an artist and illustrator based out of Tokyo. He creates alternate realities full of grime and electric landscapes and creatures that are like what you see around you right now; they’re just soaked in radiation, beset by mutations, and on the verge of collapse. But, to be honest, the apocalypse never looked so dang fun.
“My works used to come from anger,” says Tawaraya, “but maybe not so much these days. I love Science Fiction, so lots of my comic and drawings and stories are based on the end of the world. There is a real apocalyptic feeling to it. I like the idea of humans developing and customizing their body to adapt themselves to the polluted air or environment.”
Tawaraya’s fine art is split into standalone imagery and comics with loose (albeit compelling) narratives. The same vibe rings through both sets of work, although the standalone pieces could easily be frames from the comics. Looking at “One Eye Horse” we see vibrant colors alight the path of a lone rider astride their faithful steed. The rider is decked out in the customizations that Tawaraya describes, while landscape around the rider could easily be poisoned by electricity, doused in something noxious, or simply a meadow that is serene and peaceful in its alien way.
Backgrounds are highly textured and decorated with spikes and jagged edges and pools of ooze and otherworldly gore. Tawaraya has mastered the craft of taking recognizable objects and anatomy and bending them, twisting them, inverting them to the point of madness. But he never loses the thread. We never lose touch with what the object is supposed to be. Anyone could look at the eponymous, monocular equine and know, without a doubt, that this is one fucked up horse, but a horse, of course. We do not see the face of the rider but we know their visage. The determination. The willingness to sacrifice so much to see through their goal.
BEING HONEST WITH YOURSELF ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT IS IMPORTANT, BECAUSE YOUR MOOD AND INTENTION CHANGES EVERY DAY.”
Speculative genres like sci-fi are so cross-pollinated with horror and fantasy and the Western that the conventions of one frequently bleed into the others. “Ghetto Samurai” brings the genre-blending eastward, and nods to the cowboy motifs that became integral to conventions of post-war samurai films in Japan.
“Story does not flow out at all,” Tawaraya says. “I usually squeeze my brain out. I make drafts when I have time, but sometimes it makes everything boring. I would not get excited if I knew exactly what I had to draw. My comic should be against typical ones, so I just try doing my best Fred Frith impression when I am making them.”
If he feels like he is wasting time, Tawaraya just starts inking without any ideas. He recounts the process behind “Saxophonist in 2084.” The slender, robotic-insectoid face was taken from an old sci-fi comic while the body and instrument came together in a flash. Another one, “Midnight Rescue,” came from a vintage brass button design.
“It is so funny that someone created a world inside a tiny thing,” he says of the button. “Making choices about what compositions will do, and where to go with them, is taking longer and longer than before. I typically improvise when
I get bored, so I do both planning and free style. I like keeping mistakes and developing them into something better. Being honest with yourself about what you want to do at any given moment is important, because your mood and intention changes every day.”
I MAKE DRAFTS WHEN I HAVE TIME, BUT SOMETIMES IT MAKES EVERYTHING BORING. I WOULD NOT GET EXCITED IF I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I HAD TO DRAW.”
Tawaraya’s early work was mostly raw and black and white. He did not have a way to print in color and the Xerox machines he could access were all monochromatic. While making color images takes longer than the good ol’ Xerox days, Tawaraya now uses silk screening and risographs along with markers, spray paint, needle pen and scratchboard, and watercolors to achieve his look.
We can witness the stark layered effect this long multi-step process achieves in “Tentacle Head.” The pink hood with green scaling seems to sink deep into the background, as if the head is long and curved. The tentacled face itself is almost blurry and hard to focus on, shifting around as if between one dimension and another, one that can be seen and one that can only be sensed.
The immediacy of Tawaraya’s art can also be felt in music he makes with punk bands like 2UP in Tokyo and Dmonstrations in San Diego. The riffs are explosive, the bass is heavy, and the drums drop kick you in the jaw. “I feel more collaborative when working with other artists in bands and projects like that. Making comics and art is personal,” he says.
The worlds merge often, however, as Tawaraya is a prolific flyer-maker for bands and venues. He draws, colors, and letters these signs in his typical style. In one for the Casbah in San Diego, we see his lettering technique.
I get bored, so I do both planning and free style. I like keeping mistakes and developing them into something better.
The lettering in the Casbah flyer is roughhewn and subtle, as if it were made of polished gems mined from the cragged depths of the hoodoos in the background. The letters feel dangerous. Touching them too carelessly might prick your finger and release deadly poison into your bloodstream. Rubbing them too preciously might leave you haunted by an extra-dimensional ghost that comes in the middle of the night, all static and horror.
“Lettering is as important as the artwork for signs, flyers, books,” he says, “but always comes after the art is ready.”
The world that Tawaraya is creating is loose, diffuse, and full of danger. There are rules and codes of honor that seem familiar but, once explored, defy easy explanation.
In one work, “Dentist,” we see a funny, furry man scrubbing out a crocodile’s open maw. Our certainty about who exactly is in danger and where the danger lives is thrown in disarray as we realize that another crocodile waits behind the first, with a set of floating eyes obscuring its face and its lips pursed as if it spews out the crocodile receiving the dental procedure.
The danger of annihilation and adaptation, of apocalypse and our attempts to escape it, radiates throughout the illustrations and paintings of Tawaraya. It reminds us both that the end is always nigh somewhere, and that we may as well enjoy the ride in getting there.*
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